[You're hereby warned of major spoilers from last night's 'True Blood' season 7 installment "Fire in the Hole," as well as a few episodes beyond.]

Once 'True Blood' season 7's premiere "Jesus Gonna Be Here" killed off a main character before the opening credits, it was safe to say that no one was...well, safe in the show's final year. Last night's "Fire in the Hole" pulled off a few unexpected surprises of its own, but none so much as what befell Joe Manganiello's werewolf character Alcide Herveaux, so what does Manganiello himself have to say of the development?

Assuming you're still here after the spoiler warnings, let's cut right to the chase. Joe Manganiello's Alcide Herveaux is no more. He has ceased to be. He's expired and gone to meet his maker and so on, and so forth. Yes, the closing moments of last night's "Fire in the Hole" saw fit to dispatch Alcide as quickly as the premiere killed Tara, only this time onscreen with human hunters taking aim at Manganiello's character in the woods after a climactic rescue of Sookie.

Once and future 'Magic Mike' star Manganiello made the press rounds to discuss his character's final season exit, seeming none-too-upset of the development, and understanding that Alcide would have to die a more noble death to keep audience sympathy with Sookie, and still clear the way for her to resolve issues with the vampire characters. In particular, Manganiello had deduced Alcide's fate by last season's finale "Radioactive," as Alcide had only ever really interacted with Sam of the main Bon Temps cast, and was a prime candidate for death in the final season.

Manganiello was glad to have been killed by humans, rather than suffer a more emasculating death at the hands of his vampire rivals, while all involved with writing the episode came of the conclusion that Alcide would have abhorred becoming a vampire to save his life. Sadly, we might not expect to see Alcide again in any form, as Manganiello told various outlets that all the travel and shooting talked about in his Twitter feed should effectively end speculation of his having returned to film any additional 'True Blood' episodes.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, Manganiello spoke to TVLine of his dissatisfaction with the character, namely through several unexplored arcs, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil that upended the series in its sixth season:

I was sad that the opportunity to have a substantial storyline between Alcide and Emma, the little wolf, wasn’t explored. Alcide was adamant that he didn’t want to have children because he didn’t want to pass on that gene. But the fact that he orphaned that little girl by killing her father, I think there was a missed opportunity there to really explore something. Him trying to work through that karma by awkwardly showing this little girl how to be a werewolf, I thought, would have been a wonderful storyline.

I never got into any kind of depth with our storyline, showing why the two of them didn’t get along. [The producers] had something planned for us, but unfortunately, it was one of the casualties of the showrunner switch of Season 6. My storyline was completely...I mean, there was no storyline. It was just gone. All of a sudden, I was just beating up a bunch of girls. It was weird...

There was this really textured, interesting relationship in those last scenes with Robert Patrick that were killed. We even shot some of them, but they were junked in order to make this “Alcide is an a—hole” storyline. It was odd. Comic-Con was weird that year, too. The fans were confused, and I was confused, too. I didn’t know why that was happening either, but obviously there was a situation going on higher up the ladder that we all had to bare with.

And while Manganiello doesn't seem too disappointed to have left the series behind, the actor at least revealed that he'd be open to revisiting the character, telling TVGuide "I would play him again in a movie if the rights became available. I would do a spin-off. I actually started writing a story line for that guy intended to be for the comic books, but then they got canceled, I guess."

All bets are off as to who might bite the bullet before 'True Blood' comes to a close with its August 24 series finale, but in the meantime, what say you? Were you shocked and saddened to see Alcide killed off in last night's episode? Did Joe Manganiello deserve a better end? Give us your thoughts in the comments below, along with your predictions for 'True Blood''s ultimate endgame!

Watch a SPOILERY supercut of the most memorable deaths on 'True Blood'